Note 2 — INTRODUCTION

The passage is thus rendered by Jasper Mayne (Part of Lucian, made English ... in the year 1638):—'Nor were it amiss, having passed through India and Aethiopia, to draw our discourse down to their neighbouring Aegypt. Where the ancient fiction which goes of Proteus, methinks, signifies him only to be a certain dancer and mimic; who could transform and change himself into all shapes, sometimes acting the fluidness of water, sometimes the sharpness of fire, occasioned by the quickness of its aspiring motion, sometimes the fierceness of a lion, and fury of a libbard, and waving of an oak, and whatever he liked.'